Gentrification, Displacement, and Alternative Futures

Gentrification is one of the most debilitating―and least understood―issues in American cities today. Scholars and community activists adjoin in Gentrification, Displacement, and Alternative Futures to engage directly and critically with the issue of gentrification and to address its impacts on marginalized, materially exploited, and displaced communities.

Authors in this collection begin to unpack and explore the forces that underlie these significant changes in an area’s social character and spatial landscape. Central in their analyses is an emphasis on racial formations and class relations, as they each look to find the essence of the urban condition through processes of demographic change, economic restructuring, and gentrification. Their original findings locate gentrification within a carefully integrated theoretical and political framework and challenge readers to look critically at the present and future of gentrification studies.

Gentrification, Displacement, and Alternative Futures is a vital read for scholars and researchers, as well as planners and organizers hoping to understand the contemporary changes happening in our urban areas.

Erualdo González Romero is Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at California State University, Fullerton. He is a critical urbanist and ethnic studies scholar. He focuses on gentrification, neighborhood planning, urban health, and governance and public policy, with an emphasis on Mexican immigrants and communities of color.

Michelle E. Zuñiga is Assistant Professor in Urban and Community Planning at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Her research focuses on resident perspectives of neighborhood change occurring in areas undergoing increased investment towards sustainable urban development. She is most interested in learning how Latinx immigrant communities experience the benefits and disruptions of neighborhood change and their implications for environmental, social, and economic justice.

Ashley C. Hernandez is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Urban Planning and Public Policy at the University of California, Irvine, where she studies and teaches on urban governance and inequality, race, and social movements. Her research investigates anti-gentrification activism and community-based organizations in East Los Angeles and beyond.

Rodolfo D. Torres is Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning at the University of California, Irvine. He is co-author of The Latino Question: Politics, Laboring Classes, and the Next Left and co-author of Capitalism and Critique: Unruly Democracy and Solidarity Economics, among many other books.